Eloho

From a very young age, I knew I was beautiful. After all, mummy told me, daddy told me, friends, family and everyone who came around to the house said I was a fine girl. In secondary school, everyone told me how pretty I was and they actually said I was one of the “finest girls in my class”. I was very aware of it. Then I got into university and I started to gain weight. That’s when my confidence began to drop because people now saw me and said: “you’re adding weight oh, it doesn’t look good on you.” All these comments and unsolicited opinions had their effect on me and I started to look for ways to lose weight. My effort was futile and I put on more weight. There was one particular incident that got to me and I stopped taking pictures for some time because of it. My friend at the time told me that I had a double chin and it didn’t look good in pictures. I kept trying to lose weight and at some point, my efforts paid off. But the talks didn’t stop. Instead, some said “you looked better when you were bigger,” some said “you look sick, what happened?” It was at this point I began to understand that people will always have something to say. It didn’t matter whether you did what they wanted or looked how they wanted, they would always have an opinion. And that’s when I started to speak positively to myself. I told myself, you’re beautiful, fat or slim, you’re beautiful. Now I have my confidence back, I know I am beautiful and I don’t care what anybody else has to say about it.